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Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Salty Christians–Part 2

(Mat 5:13) Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

In this verse, Jesus informs his disciples that we are the salt of the earth. In the last post, we looked at the PRIORITY of the statement. Today, we will look at:

THE PROMINENCE OF THE STATEMENT

There are four important facts to consider about:

First, Salt does not do its best work in the shaker. Have you ever gone through a drive thru and gotten an order of French fries with no salt on them? They had the salt by the deep fryer, but it didn’t do you any good because the salt did not make it out of the shaker. You don’t receive the benefit of the salt until it is out of the shaker.

Now, how does this relate to us today? Well, you can sit in church your whole life, but you won’t be effective unless you get up and live out what you hear taught. Churches today are filled with too many un-used salt shakers.

Secondly, Salt is no good until it makes contact.Living in Michigan, I have become very familiar with rock salt. I keep a small garbage can full of it by my back door. But I am not amazed and confused every morning when I wake up and my driveway is icy even though that all of that rock salt is sitting there. It does no good until it comes in contact with the ice.

A Christian can never be effective in this world until they begin to come in contact with a lost and dying world around them. Christians are most effective when the lost not only hear the gospel from them, but see and observe the salt in their life.

Too many are content to hear the gospel preached to them, but not go out and tell anyone else around them. That is why Jesus’ last command before He ascended into Heaven was, “Go ye…”

Next, we see that Salt loses itself in order to become effective.

Salt is most effect when it is completely dissolved. When it is too cold (20-15°F), salt cannot dissolve, and therefore cannot work – I have learned the hard way and wasted some bags (and $) of salt to no avail. I believe this is a principle that Jesus taught in Mark 8:35 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it.

When Jesus talks about losing your life, He is not telling you to go out and run head-first into oncoming traffic. He is teaching us that in order to truly live, we must lose those things that we hold dear, the things that we think we can’t live without (jobs, hobbies, etc.).

We die in order to live. Just as salt, we must lose ourselves in order to become effective for Christ.

Finally, we know that Salt is no good when it loses its savor.

Salt CAN lose its ability to be effective. HOW?

1. When foreign chemicals are mixed with it, it loses it savor. When we allow sin to be mixed in with our life, we lose our saltiness.

2. When it sits on the shelf too long, it begins to crystallize and gets hard – Many Christians have sat in church so long doing nothing and continuing in their sin that their hearts have grown cold and hard.

And what does Jesus say is the result of someone who has lost their saltiness, lost their savor? THEY ARE GOOD FOR NOTHING! If I said you were good for nothing, you would say I was being mean spirited and harsh – but that is exactly what Jesus is saying.

So, we notice today that Jesus is saying we can either be salt, or we can be good for nothing. WHICH ARE YOU TODAY?